Addressing the State of Alliance War Changes
ZacTheSword
Member Posts: 63 ★★
How have the new changes to alliance war been for everyone?
As an officer, the last week of war has been an absolute nightmare of an experience to plan defence, assign and coordinate members in AQ and AW. I expressed my distain to the changes to other alliance officers, who agreed that these changes were costing deaths and extra stress. This led me to make this post to address the changes to war.
What were the changes to alliance war?
1. Alliance war starting time has now shifted slightly forward from its old starting time
2. War attack phase now lasts 48 hours instead of 24 hours
3. The Defence Placement Period has been removed
I will break down the problems with each of these changes
Firstly, alliance war starting time has shifted 2-3 hours forward from its usual time. Despite being a small change, officers and planners in certain timezones have to now plan at 2am-3am, which means that they would rather start planning when they wake up: 6-7 hours later.
This change is particularly noticeable in global alliances, which would contain at least one battlegroup in asia (gmt+5-10)
This is a rather small hindrance, but it does add up to the other problems stated later.
Secondly, alliance war lasting 48 hours was clearly intended to give alliances more time to finish war and plan (for higher tier alliances). From my perspective (plat-masters), this change has caused the inverse effect, with the following problems,
- Alliance War and Alliance Quests are now mis-aligned. As alliance quest still locks champions out of alliance war, members are waiting for plan to release before entering alliance quest. With plans being released later and schedules being disrupted, movement in alliance quest has been next to nothing/barely any movement for the first 16 hours, and is being rushed to finish in the last 8 hours, forcing people to use energy refills.
- Alliance War is also being disrupted by this, alliance members are struggling to coordinate with each other to move when the plan comes out late (14-20 hours after start of war instead of 6-7), many members are either at work or sleeping, movement in alliance war has also been stunted. Personally, I have been circumventing this by planning from 3am to 6am on working days before i go to office, allowing my battlegroup move with ease, meanwhile the other 2 battlegroups in my alliance have many coordination issues and barely any movement on the first day. This means that either the officers will suffer, or the entire battlegroup's movement suffers, which may lead to cases like fights stolen and bad matchups (ie. gt40 vs salty war)
Lastly, the removal of defence placement period has removed our ability to lock in our masteries for war defence whenever we want. The original intentions of this change was to help officers have 1 less thing to chase members for (placing defence). However, officers are now instead chasing members to adjust masteries before war starts, making this change literally useless and ineffective. It stresses members out as well since they can only turn on suicides after war has started, frustrating their arena grind cycles and suicide related content - incursions & brutalDLX challenge
How can we fix this?
As to most problems, there is no straightforward answer to solving these problems. However there are definitely some solutions that can help to this.
1. Mastery Presets for Defence: We already have this in battlegrounds, just allow users to lock in masteries for war whenever
2. Remove the champion lock in AQ to remove restraints between AQ and AW
3. Matchmaking does not take 4 hours. Let users view the alliance war map of their opponent during matchmaking period to let officers plan war earlier like before
4. Revert the entire war change completely. Its caused so much problems that it has only sped up my retirement from the game, I havent even had time to play battlegrounds.
Would like to hear input and of course your opinions on this in the polls and comments.
As an officer, the last week of war has been an absolute nightmare of an experience to plan defence, assign and coordinate members in AQ and AW. I expressed my distain to the changes to other alliance officers, who agreed that these changes were costing deaths and extra stress. This led me to make this post to address the changes to war.
What were the changes to alliance war?
1. Alliance war starting time has now shifted slightly forward from its old starting time
2. War attack phase now lasts 48 hours instead of 24 hours
3. The Defence Placement Period has been removed
I will break down the problems with each of these changes
Firstly, alliance war starting time has shifted 2-3 hours forward from its usual time. Despite being a small change, officers and planners in certain timezones have to now plan at 2am-3am, which means that they would rather start planning when they wake up: 6-7 hours later.
This change is particularly noticeable in global alliances, which would contain at least one battlegroup in asia (gmt+5-10)
This is a rather small hindrance, but it does add up to the other problems stated later.
Secondly, alliance war lasting 48 hours was clearly intended to give alliances more time to finish war and plan (for higher tier alliances). From my perspective (plat-masters), this change has caused the inverse effect, with the following problems,
- Alliance War and Alliance Quests are now mis-aligned. As alliance quest still locks champions out of alliance war, members are waiting for plan to release before entering alliance quest. With plans being released later and schedules being disrupted, movement in alliance quest has been next to nothing/barely any movement for the first 16 hours, and is being rushed to finish in the last 8 hours, forcing people to use energy refills.
- Alliance War is also being disrupted by this, alliance members are struggling to coordinate with each other to move when the plan comes out late (14-20 hours after start of war instead of 6-7), many members are either at work or sleeping, movement in alliance war has also been stunted. Personally, I have been circumventing this by planning from 3am to 6am on working days before i go to office, allowing my battlegroup move with ease, meanwhile the other 2 battlegroups in my alliance have many coordination issues and barely any movement on the first day. This means that either the officers will suffer, or the entire battlegroup's movement suffers, which may lead to cases like fights stolen and bad matchups (ie. gt40 vs salty war)
Lastly, the removal of defence placement period has removed our ability to lock in our masteries for war defence whenever we want. The original intentions of this change was to help officers have 1 less thing to chase members for (placing defence). However, officers are now instead chasing members to adjust masteries before war starts, making this change literally useless and ineffective. It stresses members out as well since they can only turn on suicides after war has started, frustrating their arena grind cycles and suicide related content - incursions & brutalDLX challenge
How can we fix this?
As to most problems, there is no straightforward answer to solving these problems. However there are definitely some solutions that can help to this.
1. Mastery Presets for Defence: We already have this in battlegrounds, just allow users to lock in masteries for war whenever
2. Remove the champion lock in AQ to remove restraints between AQ and AW
3. Matchmaking does not take 4 hours. Let users view the alliance war map of their opponent during matchmaking period to let officers plan war earlier like before
4. Revert the entire war change completely. Its caused so much problems that it has only sped up my retirement from the game, I havent even had time to play battlegrounds.
Would like to hear input and of course your opinions on this in the polls and comments.
Addressing the State of Alliance War Changes 231 votes
I am a war planner and i enjoy this change
9%
23 votes
I am a war planner and i dislike this change
27%
63 votes
I play alliance war and this change helps me in war
12%
30 votes
I play alliance war and this change has caused inconveniences
43%
101 votes
I do not play alliance war
6%
14 votes
14
Comments
I will probably retire from masters and AW completely unless changes are made. Thanks for a well thought out post.
If war started at 3PM EST like it used to and ended at 12PM EST 2 days later that would at least still give the 43 hours to fight like we currently have, but not have changed to a new timeslot that is disruptive to AQ.
I hate that you also can't view opponents or teammates in other battle groups. If you click on an icon that isn't showing their portrait, you cannot view enemy teams, who they used for a fight, or see to tag your fellow players in AQ or AW. (Not sure if this one is just a bug or what.)
I hate not being able to readily be able to change masteries without chasing every player down. We already have mastery loadouts in the game in BG's. Why not in AW as well?
I hate how confusing the new defense layout it. Having to place champs in 2+ maps if you're on the edge of changing tiers is frustrating. Having to make sure both Maps are prepared as you move up and down tiers of AW and make sure both were changed as officers make defenses changes mid season just adds extra stress. Why not have a "copy defense setup" similar to the current way we enlist for AQ? Set up 1 map, then you can set the other 2 defense maps (expert, challenger, and easy maps. Not BG 1, 2, and 3 to the same layouts.)
If I had to give an overall opinion. I like the spirit of some of the changes that were made. Longer fight times, less time tracking every player down to place defense, not having to set the same defense every other day. But in the process of making those good changes, we introduced a slew of new problems, or showed some ideas I don't think were fully fleshed out, I suspect, by people that are used to playing in higher tiers of AW. Otherwise I think they'd have seen the same issues as most players and officers.
You don't have to wait for war assignments to do aq. Just pick 1)alternative champs 2) wait until the aq day ends if those champs are needed for war.
There are 2 full days here. Even if day1 is required for initial planning, the time needed to move is very less.
This change overall is awesome, the only issue is the mastery swap time, which I agree isn't great. Otherwise it has been a positive change for my alliance planners in general so far.
Additionally, switching teams in aq every 2 days is very confusing and has cost many people potions and item outs in AQ.
Im glad the change is good for you, but sadly waiting out alliance quest simply doesnt work out for most alliances who do map 8 AQ
You don’t know when it starting or ending, the new attack timer is pointless! You needed longer fight times(7* beefy healths)not longer attack phase.
Nobody understands the placement due to there is 3 maps under placement and we never really got told how it works
It doesn’t feel like a AW season due to it took that long to start. I feel like the intentions was good and pure but it was definitely a swing and a miss on this one! Let just hope the new “AQ” set up WHEN it comes in isn’t this much of a mess
now they're obviously complaining again about it as I said when this was announced. it is what it is. how anyone could not see the extendedly time and its effect is crazy but I saw it a mile away.
With the way defense masteries are locked at matchmaking officers still have to conduct everyone's mastery check and reset for every single war, which is actually quite a lot of work especially when members switch masteries not only for war attack but also for arena etc (defense is not exactly persistent if masteries change is it)
I largely approve of this post.
One thing is that we've had two months since last season ended, so the rust is real.
Secondarily, the placement across current tier and -1/+1 tier was a nightmare, with multiple seeming resets of placement, forcing us to have our members repeatedly place defenders across multiple maps.
In fairness, I appreciate the thought behind persistent placement, but as mentioned above, this has been replaced by chasing members to sort masteries.
The added attack time phase was something I particularly looked forward to, but have been sorely disappointed by. War start now means our war planners have gone to bed by the time war goes live, so unless entrepreneural players take on themselves to assign paths and teams, we basically lose the initial first 6 hours of the war, on top of having to plan during morning for us instead of evening. This then means that by the time were done planning, our US players have gone to bed, so another 6-7 hours wait timer for them. That's 14 hours of the war gone already.
The added attack phase _should_ have minimized stress and allowed for one person potentially to oversee multiple BGs, but in practice I see my officers having to chase down members to respond. Might be rust might be because "hey, we have nearly 2 days, what's the rush?"
Finally, we got hosed prior to season start by one war that accidentally had rating change enabled. We lost the war, meaning we dropped to T3. Despite having a week to fix this, it wasn't, so we had to begin the season with T3 multiplier, hurting our chances for P1 placement.
So far, I have been anything but happy about the implementation.
Also, I also do Map8 aq, I'm an SSX member. I also put up one of the higher point totals in aq in the ally. Being flexible with your AQ teams is not tough. Plenty of good counters there.
Mastery loadouts are needed, not disputing that.
For me/us the changes have really opend up a can of worms.
1. The Lack of proper information about "How everything works"
Most of my players do not understand or realize what the PPP means for them playing AW.
There is a high amount of explaining I had to do via InGameChat that censors every 10th normal word (which doesn't make it easier to convey a complex topic)
There was the initial post but it didn't show even a fraction of all the things that would be different.
For example the new start time (which is in the middle of the night for me now) or that my players were completely supprised by the start of the attack phase because they didn't see a placement phase.
The different maps available also seem to confuse many players.
- Player Side: A comparison video about old System / new System would be helpful because you could refer to it as a leader. There are so many changes that it cannot be easily reapeated for every player all the time. For example things like: "What is the difference between the "continiue war / place heroes" Buttons" It's not complicated but when you have to explain it over and over again it costs a lot of time. And yes the first time I did it in our main chat - But there is so much new things and the space there is limited and overwrites itself too soon if there is a lot to say about htings.
- Officer/Leader Side: Also a video for us who have to set up everything would have been nice / one that takes in account lower playing alliances with less than 3 BGs
2. Filling up Battlegroups
One of the things that is really hard is coordinating the players. Yes I do know that you can assign BGs but. Let's try this when you have 2 BGs and a Mix of regular and ocasionally AW players.
I did a survey: 13 Players play regular every AW & 12 Play on & of casually.
In the past those who always played had no problem to find an open spot and those who play more casually filled up the rest of the open spots.
Now the casual players join in Placement and are always "placed/reserved for attack" but do not always participate and block the spot for somebody else who thinks everything is full. And they often just forgot that they have placed Defenders even though they didn't plan to participate in the war. Normally they would have joined & know that they would participate in the next war. Because of the PPP that is no longer the case.
3. Unbalanced Battlegroups
Between AW2 & 3 I had to make two players switch BGs - Try to explain that when both are in BGs that are completely full (one has to leave the BG first so the other can join - then the second can join the open spot in the other BG) Add to that the confusion of "How can I leave the BG while I'm active in the current attack?" and a time difference between both players & me who tries to explain that the placement is independent form the attack now once the Attack phase started. I lost so many hours because of the time differences & the postponed answers to the questions.
- We really need to give the Leaders/Officers to switch players form one BG to another just like we are able to reshuffel the defenders on the map that would really help sorting out BGs
4. Tow additional small things:
- Has anyone noticed that the way how you can reshuffle defenders has changed? Before you clicked on one spot and then on the other and you could switch both defenders. Now when you click on an open spot and then on the defernder you want to put there - it doesn't work anymore. You have to click on the defender first and then on the open spot. Before you can do that you have to deactivate the empty spot again. The old method of switching only works when there are defenders on both spots. I know it's just a small thing but I was so used to have empty spots that I can fill up that it really confused me before I figured out why it didn't work like before.
- When you have enlisted for 2 BGs the placement shows 3 open BGs
I repeatedly have players who join BG3 even though we only play BG 1 & 2.
If 2 BGs are enlisted only 2 BGs should appear as available in my opinion.
Ok so far so good. Those are the things that I can think of at the top of my head that we had or have problems with regarding the AW changes. I'm sure there will be more.
I think that a large part of the problems that currently occur are not communicated to the community. The reason for this is because a rather small group namely mainly the Officers and Alliance leaders are currently experiencing them. The larger general number of players only realizes a fraction of what has changed.
I do not say all the changes are generally bad - I just think that the implementation was not well planned & there is still a lot to do to make it work.
I do agree that this change was definitely meant for good means, but the implementation was definitely half assed and poorly thought out. I do hope they could make some of the changes you and I have suggested, and especially a hotfix on those mastery presets
One person joined the wrong bg, so we had to get thr last person to join whatever bg had an open slot. Now we are not sure how to switch them back. You cannot join a bg that already has 10 players and you cant leave a bg without joining another one.
Kabam really needs to make these more clear. Its creating problems. All our officers are looking to be demoted and as a leader, not sure what to do.
Horrible changes. Though technically persistent placement works. I actually like the 48 hour attack, no requirement to keep adjusting defenders, etc. Horrible executed though.
- If someone changes their defense, they need to tell an officer as you may need to reshuffle all 5 of their defenders
- If you are swapping someone out, you only have the time from when the wars ends to when match making starts for them to place defense
As far as persistent placement goes, I hate 99% of it. Officers need more options i.e.
1. Ability to copy defense to other map difficulties
2. Ability to remove people from battle groups. We play 1 bg and the people change from war to war. I hate to have to ask people to remove their defense so someone new can place
3. No way to lock masteries. This is a gross oversight on kabam’s part and affects every alliance, not just casual ones.
The idea of persistent placement is good, but Kabam really missed the mark on this first implementation. I’m hopeful that they see all this feedback and make changes in the coming season though.
It's a LOT more work for officers / as for players. Having to place on all 3 difficulties and having to adjust all of them each time there's a change... some ppl are just not doing it.
War is on ALL the time now. People are forgetting to attack. Defense organization is a mess. The start time is way later than previously - and it does mess with AQ. The whole layout is very confusing. It sucks when you get a new member and their defense is locked for two days elsewhere, or when a member must change bgs. And the worse thing is Officers can't remove players from battlegroups.
There are other things I dislike about it but on the whole - and I never thought I'd say this after wanting a revamp of AW for so long but... I really wish we had the old AW back. It was a hundred times better than this.
It's clear kbm was only trying to please the top allis with this. Now I hope they wont just fix the mastery issue for them and leave everything as is, coz for the rest of us this new AW is the final straw that's breaking our backs.
But I dissagree on the planning and movement in AQ/AW.
War attack used to last 24 hours, with 2-4hours substracted for planning. So in essence, we had about 20-22 hours for attack. Now we have 44 hours. Just use the first 20 hours to plan (make a really good plan, bounce ideas off of oficers and members) and then release the plan at the time the old attack phase started: thursday/saturday/monday at 11:30 PST
So now you have a well thought out plan and 24 hours to attack (a few hours more than before). And there wont be any reason for members not to join AQ on time.
On a personal note, I wish they'd take AW offline for 6+ months and completly redesign it. Or even come up with something new. The mode has become stale, outdated and boring. To play high tier 1 war costs over 2k units a month between boosts and mastery changes, not to mention the stress, and the rewards are just not worth it, even top10.